Our partners at the Aegean Pearl prepared an extraordinary celebration -- with beautiful decorations (including a vast array of blue and white balloons and flowers), tables full of traditional Greek and Cretan mezes (appetizers), newly-invented drinks (blue ouzo and raki, special blue water), and above all, a special cake.

My father covered a variety of home entertainment products including what were at the time fairly newly-invented items including the home personal computer, the home videocasette player, and the home video game console.

Earthlink also boasts a spam filter that I thought went out around the time the British army decided it actually was not an appropriate badge of honor for their officers to be attired in red (which was, coincidentally, around the time German marksmen were searching for targets for their newly-invented machine guns in the haze of the French countryside).

Outgoing Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, set to challenge outgoing Majority Leader Steny Hoyer to remain whip and vault himself to the number two spot in the minority, conceded after being offered a newly-invented third-ranking leadership spot.

The Sonata echoes jazz in another way, though, in that the material Carter is putting through his favored paces is often quasi-vernacular, rather than newly-invented — for example, the forlana rhythm that permeates the third movement — and we're more conscious of the manipulations, like an improvisation over familiar changes.